What new women’s ski this year was a unisex ski last year? Answer: the three smallest sizes of the Kore 93. As has been observed on these pages before, the construction requirements of an off-trail ski and a women’s ski are virtually identical. Having already created an immaculate lightweight construction, all that remained to make its highly acclaimed Kore 93 a women’s ski was to move the mounting position two cm’s ahead and add a W to its name.
By anointing the Kore 93 with a “W,” Head felt it could part ways with the Wild Joy and Great Joy. Let us pause a moment to mourn the passing of two pioneering women’s skis. The Wild Joy was remarkably supportive for its weight, an identity crisis that may have hurt its ability to attract a larger following. The Great Joy should have been the star of the original Joy series, but it’s hard to make a 98mm-waisted ski the centerpiece of a women’s collection. When we look back at this era, the Great Joy will be remembered as one greatest made-from-scratch women’s skis of all time.
For the 19/20 season, Kästle completely re-formulated its FX series of wide, off-trail models. To create its first-ever women’s model in the FX family, Kästle choose to work off the FX96 template, as the 96mm waist width optimizes the strengths of the new design for female skiers.
One of the goals of the new FX series was weight reduction, so Kästle engineers concocted Tri-Tech, a trifecta of design features all aimed at keeping weight off. Tri-Tech is essentially a core-within-a-core; a central channel of high-density woods is wrapped in a glass torsion box and braced on either side with lighter wood laminates. The torsion box rides higher than the outer sections, creating a 3D top surface, which is the first weight-saver. Second is the concentration of hard woods in the center, so lighter woods can be used in the remaining 2/3 of the core. Third is using a thicker core profile in the central torsion box, which gives it more power without adding more materials.
The Kästle MX99 should not be mistaken for a set of training wheels. If you’ve never owned a ski this wide before, this is probably not the best place to start. The MX99 expects you to be good. Very good, actually. If you’re an imposter, the MX99 can and will detect your fallibilities. This is your final warning. If you continue reading this review, you’ll end wanting a pair, and I’d feel better knowing you were qualified.
The MX99 is unlike every other ski in the All-Mountain West genre. It’s the only ski in the category that evolved from a Frontside template, namely the exquisite MX84. It makes no attempt to dumb down its principles. Far from trying to disassociate the front of the ski from the rest of the chassis, as is the norm among AMW models, the MX99 tries to connect to the turn starting in the shovel.
The Lighter is Better trend, whose influence is evident elsewhere in the AMW category, is just background noise to the MX99 to which it pays no attention. Instead of subtracting material, Kästle added a sheet of braided carbon to its usual all-wood core and two sheets of .5mm Titanal. With all this shock-damping material onboard, the MX99 could collide with a Sequoia and only the tree would feel it.
Did you ever have a ski dream where everything was perfect? You can’t tell if your skis are an extension of your being or visa versa. You flow from turn to turn expending all the energy of a passenger lounging on a high-speed train. The scenery blurs as your speed climbs steadily until you reach a zone where time warps, aging is reversed, and still you’re totally connected to the snow by forces that feel at once magnetic, emotional and gravitational.
I can’t guarantee that you’ll arrive at this transcendental state the first time you step into a Kästle MX84, but you will if you keep trying. For if you’re not a beautiful skier before you encounter an MX84, in time it will make you one. This claim probably sounds optimistic, if not delusional, yet several testers claim that the MX84 essentially coached them into making better turns. Rather than dismiss it as New Age hogwash, I suggest you reconsider the hypothesis that a great ski invites great skiing.
Line turns 25 this year, still young by old guard Euro brand standards, and still able to speak directly, eye-to-eye and bong-hit-by-bong-hit, with today’s alienated youth. Rebels define themselves by what they are not, and in the case of the slacker rebels Line rabble-rouses, the list of things they’re not into is long:
Super-carving on groomers. (Super-carving in pow is allowed and is totally awesome.)
Color-matched outfits, unless it’s ironic.
Ski lessons that involve drills.
Any other ski lessons.
(Narrow skis.)
Ski fashion.
Stories that begin, “You should have been here…”
Any racing that involves missing actual skiing.
Any waiting for anyone on a pow day.
The Man.
You get the idea.
Based on this partial list, you’d think every Line would be twin-tipped, center-mounted and only operable by someone who started shaving in the last five years. But Line is in fact sneaky technical. Most of its models are decidedly directional, use a rear-of-center mounting point and possess at least a small dose of camber underfoot. Line has been making non-twin, in-resort skis for years. If you look in the back of granddad’s ski locker you might see a pair Prophets, wonderful, easy to flex skis that used a cutout metal laminate for stability.
The spirit of the old Prophets lives on in the Supernatural series, headlined by the Supernatural 100. It’s a surfy ski with a spine of Titanal lattice that gives it adequate grip on hard snow and, more importantly, keeps it on course in set-up crud.
